In electronic typesetting various types of objects such as characters or graphics are arranged in an electronic document (work region) that is displayed on a display device, such as a CRT or LCD. When typesetting an object, reference lines known as a guide or grid are used as the standard for arranging an object at a desired location in an electronic document. When setting these reference lines in an electronic document, the user must usually determine and input the dimensions of the margin region in the electronic document in order to determine the electronic document's layout range. Although an electronic document is displayed on the screen of a display device, precisely determining the margin dimensions is an extremely difficult operation; the user is not always able to set the desired margin at the first attempt, and must often attempt to set the margin a number of times. In addition, each time the margin is set it is necessary to calculate what the margin value should be and in the preliminary stage of doing important typesetting and layout processing this presents the user with operational difficulties.
Also, in prior art, when performing typesetting and layout processing on CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) font characters, which are so-called ideographic characters, there is no guide or grid that can set reference lines that can be used to set individual typesetting and/or layout attributes for each page of an electronic document, so it has been difficult to efficiently and precisely perform typesetting and layout processing with fine detail and flexibility.
In addition, in conventional electronic typesetting and layout processing, an object, known as a frame grid is used to assign a plurality of characters (for example, CJK font characters) to an electronic document in a specific arrangement. The frame grid moves the plurality of characters in the electronic document while keeping them in the specific arrangement. However, a conventional frame grid does not automatically coordinate the boundary line of the frame grid with the grid in the electronic document, and is therefore inconvenient to use.